Somebody already mentioned that this was way off list topic and...
...the subject title is definitely inappropriate but...
...since there was a recent outbreak of a similar thread on MacOS X
talk, it might be worth reporting what happened there. The discussion
demonstrated the following:
From an American perspective non-Americans _tend_ to underestimate the
role in which the USA played in WWII, and plays in third world aid,
peacekeeping etc.
From a non-American point of view Americans _tend_ to overestimate the
role they played in WWII, and play in third world aid, peacekeeping
etc.
When moved to arument, Americans tend to quote absolute numbers in
their defence which show the US in a very good light and non-Americans
point to figures like %GDP or amount per head which are less flattering.
The thread on OS X talk even got as far as discussing things like
innovativeness in the economy with the same tendencies:
The Americans tended to say, look, most of the high tech companies are
here, most of the cutting edge research gets done here. The non-
Americans countered with: the same arguments of proportion and
contended that a significant number of those companies and that
research are either run by non-Americans or were bought from non-
Americans.
The point is that there are two perspectives. As a European, I tend to
have the non-American perspectives outlined above.
Finally, to get back to the flag at the Olympics, the Americans ought
to have known better than to do this. Now, if there had been a flag for
every nation which lost a citizen on Sept. 11th, nobody would have said
anything. So, in my view, it was an error of judgement by the USA but
not an unusual one.
mark.
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